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Global Retail Value Chains: Transforming Work and Gender in African Agri-Processing

Wed, 23 November 2016, 11:45 to 13:45

Library, Seminar Rooms 1 & 2, OU, Milton Keynes

International Development seminar presented by Professor Stephanie Barrientos (Global Development Institute, University of Manchester).

Lunch (provided) from 11.45, presentation & discussion 12.15 - 13.45. To reserve your free place, please email the Social Sciences Research Office.

 

Abstract
In Africa the expansion of fresh fruit and vegetable (FFV) production and processing for European supermarkets has expanded openings for women workers. Some producers have been able to economically upgrade to meet supermarket standards, others have faced challenges, or been excluded altogether. There is divergence in the literature over whether and to what extent this has led to social downgrading or upgrading – enhanced conditions and rights, particularly for women workers and smallholders.

Professor Barrientos will compare case studies from Ghanaian pineapples and South African deciduous fruit to examine the complexities of upgrading and downgrading processes in supermarket value chains, and the gendered outcomes for different groups of workers and smallholders. She will draw on global value chain (GVC) and global production network (GPN) analysis combined with feminist political economy to examine how articulations between commercial drivers and societal drivers of upgrading and downgrading play out as contested gendered processes across diverse terrains.

Her presentation will argue that FFV production for supermarket value chains has disrupted embedded gender norms underpinning women's subordination in complex ways (generating mixed losses and gains for smallholders and workers), but has also opened new opportunities for more equitable social upgrading for some. Worker bargaining capabilities and institutional policies also play an important role in leveraging and retaining gains.

 

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